


The Watcher

by stormstaticsleep



Category: AFI
Genre: Black Sails Era, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:13:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5563060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormstaticsleep/pseuds/stormstaticsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can feel him watching you. And you have always wanted to be watched like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I. July 1999

**Author's Note:**

> Here's another piece I've been working on and will probably never finish. I like it, though, and I sincerely hope that you will, too.
> 
> Comments, criticisms, and feedback are much appreciated and welcomed.

_July 1999_

You can feel him watching you.

You know when he is and isn't, because he's driving and your body comes alive every time he does. The hair prickles at the base of your neck. Goosebumps tingle along your bare arms. Your heart rabbits in your chest. There's the tightness in your throat, the sudden shortness of breath, the nervous exhilaration of being vulnerable and exposed. Vaguely, you worry about him paying attention, that him watching you from his peripheral vision, eyes undoubtedly flickering between the road and the angles of your body softened by the shadows, is endangering your lives. But you trust Jade. After all, he's had enough practice. 

Stretching with a liquid, feline grace, you extend your arms in front of you and sigh, letting your head fall to your left shoulder so you are turned towards him in the darkness. You open your eyes to slits and cast a quick glance at the driver's seat. He is as you expected to find him. Staring resolutely at the road, lips pursed into a taut, unyielding line of determination. Forced disinterest. But his hands betray him. White knuckled, they're gripping the steering wheel, the coils of tendons on the backs of them flexing and clenching. You wonder if he cares that you caught him. Based on his ever traitorous hands, even when his face is as placid as the surface of a mist-covered lake, he certainly does. 

You can smell his sweat, sharp and cold, cutting through the warm, musky scents of everyone's body odor, the sticky sweet residue from inside the crumpled soda cans strewn beneath the seats, the petroleum, the scorched asphalt and miles burned. It's not show sweat, though that's there, too. It's fear sweat. Shame. 

A sudden gust of wind pours through your cracked window, probably from one of the countless big-rigs you've passed tonight on this lonesome spread of dusty highway. You might be past Ohio now, perhaps crossing into Pennsylvania. You feel his eyes settle on your again, albeit fleetingly, and pretend to shiver at the breeze, allowing a groan of displeasure to fall from your slightly parted mouth. The van drifts into the next lane just enough that you sense his panic, feel the unexpected lurch of motion as he overcompensates the turn deep in your belly. You shift groggily because you're feigning sleep. 

And he must know because you never sleep.


	2. II. July 1999

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for continuing to read, review, and contribute to my improvement as a writer.

_July 1999_

He can't take his eyes off you. Even if he wanted to, it's quite possible he couldn't. 

You have always wanted to be watched like this. When you were a little kid, tottering precariously on legs like the Michelin tire man's because you'd just learned to walk, you'd strut around the kitchen in front of relatives in your dungarees. You'd sing the show tunes your grandfather had taught you into a wooden spatula stained permanently orange from stirring tomato sauce, weaving in between the sea of tailored chinos and voluminous floral patterned skirts. They'd applaud you and sip Prosecco from crystal champagne flutes, ruffle your wild hair with affectionate fingertips, and pass pieces of cream-filled cannoli into your chubby, dimpled hands when your mother wasn't looking. 

You'd soaked up the attention then as you do almost twenty years later. The nervy sensitivity, the existential crises of self-consciousness. It forces you to put thought behind your every movement, so that something as simple as unlacing your boots around Jade becomes a performance. You take a quiet pride knowing that watching you do such menial tasks sends the color rising in his cheeks. 

It doesn't matter that you're dirty, veritably filthy if you think about it. You haven't showered in four days. You still reek like the cigarettes you never smoked from that club in Atlanta, like the sour beer you never drank at that house in Houston, even though you're pretty sure you're in Nevada. And it doesn't matter that Fritch and Smith are unpacking in the room. You, and your ever increasing state of undress, couldn't be farther off their radar. But the performance isn't for them, anyway. You give your laces a final pull and tug the boots from your sore, cramping feet. You straighten and grab the hem of your t-shirt. Arms crossed and then raised, you roll the weathered garment from your torso. 

You swear that your skin tingles, almost fucking _burns_ , wherever his eyes are roaming. They start at your navel, perhaps lingering too long at the sparse patch of coarse hair just above the waistband of your jeans, and move to the daggers tattooed on your sides, up the ridges of your ribcage, counting every bone. 

Jade's gotten pretty good at looking away at _just_ the right moment, you have to admit. Almost like you imagined it. But you know that you haven't. You finish taking your shirt off, rake the tangled hair from your face, and flit your eyes in his direction. He's sitting on one of the queen sized beds, biting his bottom lip. His large, pale, freckled hands, which clash terribly with the mosaic of flowers on the duvet, are flipping frantically through his CD carrying case. Headphones already jammed over his ears, he's bumping his head to the rhythm of the bass drum he isn't hearing. 

This kind of closeness is most likely driving Jade insane. Back home, it was easier to create the illusion of distance. He had his own bedroom on and shared a bathroom with the second floor. Your paths didn't have to cross this frequently unless you intended them to. That was when Jade had first moved in, though. Before you started writing _Black Sails_ in earnest. There was no illusion of distance there, just the illusion that the closeness didn't mean anything beyond an album. On tour, you can't escape the closeness. 

No one else minds the closeness. To them, it's routine and necessary. It's just sharing beds and living spaces. Showering in the bathroom while your very good friend, let's say RJ, is taking a shit. Or brushing your teeth, minding your own business, until your other very good friend, let's say Smith, walks in, whips out his dick with the hand not holding a beer bottle, and points a stream of urine into the toilet bowl. Concurrently hilarious, mortifying, and invasive, it was part of tour. And between tour and the frat house, you've seen enough limp dicks to last you a lifetime. Enough hairy ball sacks and pimpled asses to cover the expanse of an eternity. Not that you've ever seen Jade's; not that you're sure you even want to. You doubt they'd be grotesquely hairy or pimpled, and if the dick in question was anything close to what you've been imagining, you also doubt that you would find it underwhelming. Which is why you avoid that type of closeness at all costs. 

No one complains about sharing beds anymore, either. You're fairly positive no one thinks it's even remotely gay anymore. All homosexually bigoted jokes pertaining to sleep arrangements had been exhausted years ago. Now, it's just dicks and bare asses and bodily functions and the chance to sleep on a real mattress, not a scabies infested couch at a punk squat or camping in the van in front of 24 hour gas stations and supermarkets. It doesn't mean anything besides a temporary respite for homesickness or backaches, at least. 

It means everything for you and Jade. Because he can't take his eyes off you. And because he can't stop watching you, you can't stop performing. It's probably better this way, that he just watch and you perform. If watching you undress gets him off like that, actually touching in a more than platonic way will probably kill him.


	3. III. July 1999

_July 1999_

It sort of bothers you that everyone does, however, assume that you and Jade will share said sleeping arrangements, scabies infested couch or otherwise. But, then again, Hunter prefers sharing with Adam because he kicks but doesn't snore. Adam prefers sharing with Hunter, RJ, or Mikey because they hog blankets but don't kick. Smith, unfortunately, does all three of these things, but they don't matter to Fritch because he sleeps like a log. Perhaps, you think, he's rendered unconscious during the night from Smith's flailing limbs but that's beside the point. 

It also sort of bothers you that, even if everyone didn't assume that you and Jade would share, you'd want to anyway. The smell of him, clean and damp and flushed from a shower, reminds you of home. Reminds you of the hours you spent and still spend writing, just you and him and your music locked together inside your room. You like the guaranteed closeness without the possibility of it becoming more. It's not like you can reach out and fuck his mouth with your tongue. Not when your band mates or your merch guy or his _brother_ are in the room. Not that you've done that despite that you've wanted to. In this way, you feel like it's a secret between you and Jade, that he watches you and you know he's watching, but never verbally confirming it. Each party is free to cloak themselves in the security of coincidence and happenstance. 

This assumption and your preferences are how you find yourself in a bed, huddled under the covers, facing Jade in the shadows and gnawing on the inside of your lip. You think you taste blood, tongue lolling around your mouth, wishing it was Jade's, as you listen to the rumbling of Smith's snores from across the room. Most nights, you'd slam a pillow around your ears or sleep with your headphones on but, this night, you couldn't be more grateful. Smith's snoring mutes the otherwise deafening sound of your heartbeat and the shallowness of your breathing. Beside you, Jade's pretending to sleep. You know he is because he's passed out enough in your bed after writing that you can tell the difference. There's a tension between you, coming from the few inches of empty space separating your bodies and the fact that both of you are too afraid to ever close it. 

Blinking, you stare at that space, composed of a crinkled sheet and Jade's hand, the freckles that dust the tops of them constellations, his splayed fingers, the surprisingly delicate crescents of his cuticles. You can feel him resisting the urge to test those inches, to encroach upon them until they become mere centimeters and then skin.


End file.
